Startled, she cried: "Who's that?"

"My mother,"

he answered.

"Then you don't live here all by yourself?" She

had a bitter feeling of disappointment.

"Oh, no."

"I

_wish_ you did." This escaped her before she could think. Strange,

that some magic power in this child had already made her say as much

as had said.

"I must go now," he said sorrowfully. "But I'll be

out this afternoon--I guess."

Eepersip fell on her knees in

front of him and said entreatingly: "Will you do something for me?"

"I will--maybe."

"Don't tell _anybody_ about me."

"Why?"

"Never mind why, but don't, will you?"

"I want

to."

"Then I won't play with you any more."

"All right,

Eepersip. I won't." She looked at him doubtfully. "I _promise_ you

I won't. Goodbye. I like you."

Eepersip was delighted with

her little friend. She waited anxiously for him to come out. Presently

he came.

"Eepersip," he said, "will you swim with me again?"

They went in again, and this time Eepersip showed him how to swim,

by holding him up while he kicked with his arms and legs. After a long

time he could swim a little bit by himself; and then Eepersip took him

to some rather high rocks and showed him how to jump in. At first he

wouldn't do it alone; she took his hand and they jumped in together.

After that he did it alone, and screamed with laughter when he came

up. Then Eepersip showed him how to go in head first, and he had so

much faith in her that he tried it right off. Although he went rather

flat, he liked it very much. The next time Eepersip bent him 'way over

before he went in, and he straightened out and hit the water clean as

an arrow. That was much better, he said.

Eepersip asked him what

his mother had said about the fern dress, for he had gone in so quickly

that he had forgotten his own clothes. He said that she had asked him

about it, and he had said that he found it. Eepersip thanked him for

not telling about her.

But she was discovered in spite of her

caution. One day when they were playing in the woods, Mrs. Carrenda

came out and found them. Eepersip dashed for the waves immediately, in

spite of the fact that Toby's mother called: "Don't run away, little

girl; I won't hurt you!"

But Toby began to cry bitterly. "Why

did you send her away, Mother?"

"I didn't, Toby. She ran as

soon as I came. Who is she?"

That Toby did not answer. There

were two instincts equally strong struggling within him--one to obey

his mother, and the other to do what the strange girl asked him to

with the threat of refusing to play with him if he did not.

"I

can't tell you, Mother," he said courageously. It would have been as

true if he had said "I don't know," for he knew nothing but her name,

after all. However, he never stopped to think that knowing her name was

not all there was to knowing _her_.

Mrs. Carrenda wisely

pursued the matter no further; but she determined to keep watch.

Eepersip was much more cautious after this. She was always on the

lookout. Several times Toby asked her why she didn't want to be seen.

But she would not answer him. She was, however, very kind in all

other respects. Several times Mrs. Carrenda found Toby playing with

her, but never spoke or let him know. She saw that Eepersip played

nicely with him and that they liked each other much; so she did not

interfere. Once, however, she put her hands suddenly on Eepersip's

shoulders from behind and said kindly: "Little girl, don't be afraid

of me."

Eepersip sprang to her feet, stared wildly a moment,

and then dashed off straight to the sea. But for fear of making Toby

very unhappy, Mrs. Carrenda never questioned him about her.

She

and her husband had many anxious conferences together. Her husband

thought that it was exceedingly risky to let Toby play so unwatched

with Eepersip, but Toby's mother did not feel that way at all. Then

they talked over the matter of who she was.

One day Eepersip was

peeping into the house to see if she could find Toby, for he had not

been out to play with her. Looking into the dining-room, she saw him

there, eating luncheon with Mr. and Mrs. Carrenda. They were talking

anxiously, and she was curious, and listened.

"I have it," said

Mr. Carrenda suddenly. "Don't you remember those people--the Eeglines,

or Eigleens--that came over to the hill near Mount Varcrobis where we

lived before we came here? who wanted to know if we had seen a strange

little girl, dressed all in ferns? She is the Eigleens' lost little

girl."

Mrs. Carrenda looked puzzled.

"They told us, you

know, that they had given up all hope of having Ee--ee--serpip" (Toby

started violently) "back again--"

"Oh yes, I remember now."

"--When Fleuriss came, and--"

"Oh yes, it all comes back

to me now. They were making a great effort to find her and entice her

back home by telling her about her baby sister."

"Yes."

"Why, father," said Toby," Eepersip--"He suddenly saw her in his

mind, kneeling in front of him, begging him not to tell--and he said

no more. Nobody noticed his remark.

A moment Mrs. Carrenda

gazed at her husband astounded. Then she said: "I believe it is so.

Let us send word to them right off."

"No," said Mr. Carrenda,

bluntly. "Supposing they came all the way down here. Supposing the

plan failed. Mrs. Eigleen would only be unhappier than ever. We'll

just have to let them alone for a while. Supposing _we_ try

it. Supposing it fails. Mrs. Eigleen will never know. Supposing it

succeeds. They will be _much_ happier, and we shall have made

some staunch and grateful friends."

"Oh, let's try it!" agreed

Mrs. Carrenda.

"I bet Eepersip--Ee-serpip, Eeserpip, Eepersip,

Eeserpip, Eepersip--funny name! I bet she'll go home fast when she

finds out."

"Perhaps--but she is like a sea-nymph now. How

strange it is! Well, it's worth trying, at any rate."

Eepersip

had listened with growing amazement--fascinated, entranced. But when

they paused in their conversation, the charm was broken that had held

her there. She sped away into the woods. She came to a place that she

knew well, a glade surrounded by ferns and a few wild-rose-bushes now

in bloom.

She had a little sister!--it was too much. And that

little sister haunted her dreams and her imagination, making everything

seem less joyful than before. She felt a strange longing--the longing

to see her. She might be several years old now. Eepersip had forgotten

what a "year" meant, but she had a vague feeling that Fleuriss had been

living some time already. Why had no one told her? She felt a sort of

angry resentment, but it cooled immediately when she remembered that

her parents _had_ been trying desperately to tell her. Yes, a

plan was certainly shaping itself in Eepersip's mind--but not the

plan of letting herself be caught, tamed, and carried home. No indeed.

She dreamed of some day going home by stealth, seeing Fleuriss, and

playing with her as she now played with Toby. She wondered silently if

she would be anything like the fair-haired little boy. She wondered

whether Fleuriss, too, would play with her secretly. If Fleuriss

were like Toby, how wonderful it would be!

But the problem of

getting back home to see her did not appear so serious to her now

while she had Toby to play with.

She continued her beloved

explorations, discovering islands, beaches, peninsulas, and rocks out

of sight of land, which she charted down in her mind, so that she

could almost always find them.

One day Toby came to her and

told her that they were going off on a tramp, rowing over across the

bay to the woods near a little cottage that Mr. Carrenda knew about.

They had always been interested in the cottage; they wanted to see

who was living there. And they had heard about some beautiful hills

behind it, which Mr. Carrenda wanted very much to see. And if it was

pleasant they were going to start the next day. Eepersip was curious.

She wondered if it could possibly be _her_ cottage and _her_

hills--the cottage she had discovered, and the hills that she had

climbed about in. She decided to follow and see where it was that the

Carrendas were going.

When the boat started she let it get some

way off, then she plunged into the sea and followed it. The waves came

up behind, and she gained fast, but when she got dangerously near she

stopped for a while, waiting for the boat to get farther off. They

landed just where she thought they might--by the little cottage.

Near it they set up their tent, and soon they were exploring the

peninsula. They climbed the beautiful hill which Eepersip had climbed.

Once they saw her as she darted behind a tree, and wondered how she

had got there so quickly. And they fell to talking about her again.

She heard them talking over their plan of capturing her, telling her

about Fleuriss, and, when she had been smoothed down a bit, letting

her go back to the Eigleens to make them happy. If only they could

have foreseen!

They tried only once, and never had the chance

again. It was a golden day in October. Eepersip was sitting on a rock

repairing some tears in her sea-weed dress. The waves were high, and

every once in a while a little spray would splash up on to the rock

where she was sitting. Mr. Carrenda discovered her sitting there,

and, tiptoeing forward he caught her by the shoulders. She gnashed

her little white teeth at him and struggled to get away, but he held

her fast, and was about to pick her up in his arms. She shouted: "O

waves, help me!" And, magically, a great wave rushed up, whirled itself

into the air, and broke in Mr. Carrenda's face. He dropped her, and

with a lightning manœuvre she dived down from the rock into the sea,

and was far out before he recovered from the surprise. After this she

remained far from the cottage and made her home on a deserted island.

This island was a lovely place. It had a beach of fine sand on one side

and was entirely surrounded with rocks on the other sides--rocks and,

in places, even high cliffs. There was a grove of yellow pines there,

where Eepersip danced when she wished to turn nymph again. There was

a spring of fresh water on a small hill behind the grove. The hill

was still covered with blueberries and raspberries; also there was a

multitude of the plants with the sweet white roots that Eepersip was

so fond of. There were asters, too, and Eepersip wove them in with her

ferns or sea-weed, and crowned herself with them. Very happy to find

not a single house on the island, she lived there for a long time,

glad also to be able to have both the sea and the woods, to which

she still instinctively returned occasionally. The period through

which she stayed on this uninhabited island was one of the happiest

stretches of her life by the sea.

But, now that she was alone

again, Eepersip was filled once more with longing to see the little

sister--to know her, love her, play with her, teach her to leap and

dance and swim: filled with curiosities about what was going on at the

home which she had been away from for so long. And these emotions grew

and grew until they became a firm resolution. She struggled a while

to prevent herself from thinking she had made a mistake in running

away, and, thinking it all over, said that she had not, even if she

did miss such exciting things as little sisters.

The plan of

seeing Fleuriss had become more and more developed, now that she saw

little of the boy and had more time to think about it. (It was only

once in a while that she swam to the mainland to play with him.) Her

idea had changed a great deal: it now was to take Fleuriss away to

live with her. She wondered whether she could ever get her over those

awful crags, through that shadowy forest, to the sea; whether she

could make her comfortable living the wild life. Here was a difficult

situation, for Eepersip was sure that so young a child could never

endure the hardships of the life she lived--at least, until she was

used to it.

This problem troubled her mind for days. Then,

suddenly, as she was gazing over the restless murmuring sea, she had

a great inspiration, "Oh! beautiful!" she exclaimed in her delight.

The vision of the little brown cottage in the grove of white pines had

come back to her--the whole thing, how she had been borne to it on

her raft by those friendly yet terrible waves. And now she had a use

for it! It seemed strange, when she hated houses so. But then, no one

need know. She would go at once and make sure whether the Carrendas

had gone from their camp, then fix up the cottage and discover all its

secrets. _Then_ she could go and take Fleuriss away.

So

one cold day she swam back to the cottage. The Carrendas' tent was

gone; everything was as it had been before. But this time it did not

appear hateful. She opened the door and went into the pleasant little

living-room with the fireplace. Then she investigated the whole house

shore thoroughly. She found a room with glass cupboards on the walls,

filled with a marvellous collection of all kinds of sea-weeds, shells,

and corals (how Fleuriss would enjoy them! she thought); and there was

a tiny kitchen, There was one small attic room, with a ladder going

up to it through a trap-door, and in it was a soft little bed with

warm blankets, and a fireplace. Above the bed were three casement

windows, and Eepersip liked to think how it would delight Fleuriss to

see the stars out these. When she went to the second floor she came

to a snug alcove with glass doors opening on to a porch, free to the

wind and sun, overlooking the sea: and two sunny bedrooms.

But

just as she was preparing to start after Fleuriss, her reason again

detained her. Fleuriss of course could not begin her wild life in the

winter: she must have a summer of it first, to see what it was like. So

Eepersip waited patiently till spring. During the winter she lived in

a great pasture on a hill behind the cottage.

The spring

came round incredibly soon, and again Eepersip prepared to start.

The night before she went a great black cloud came up from the

west, and soon a gale was raging. The waves mounted higher than any

Eepersip had ever seen before, topped with flying snow-white spray.

They leaped the highest cliffs, thundered on the wet rocks, and then

retreated, awashing down through the cracks with a strange hollow

sound and sweeping the sea-weeds wildly up and down. The wind sounded

as on a mountain-top, a curious mixture of high-pitched whistling

and bass droning. Occasionally it would rise into a terrific scream,

making the waves rage with the uncanny storm-green. At the crisis of

the storm Eepersip, who had been standing on the beach watching, her

curls flying, her ferns fluttering and often tearing loose, flung

herself into the storm from a high rock, and was swept about like a

tiny insect, disappearing under a wave, bobbing up to take a breath

just as the next breaker washed over her. She had a glorious time out

in the waves and the spray. The sea-gulls shrieked; sometimes they

struck at a fish, and appeared all covered with spray and shaking the

drops from their wings--strong narrow wings that beat down the air as

the birds rose again, to hover and swoop and plunge. These marvellous

birds being blown wildly in the gale reminded Eepersip of the swallows,

as they were tossed about by the high pasture winds--the swallows

she had loved so when she lived on the meadow.

Slowly the wind

abated its fury, and Eepersip, covered with water-drops and spray like

a silver fish or a sea-gull, swam to the shore bubbling with happiness.

With the water still standing on her hair, she sang a sea-song on the

beach, accompanied by the rocking waves, now calmed down, and by the

screaming and wildly circling gulls.

It was a wonderful night

afterwards, for soon the sea was entirely calm, and the moon and the

stars came out, reflecting themselves in trembling silver. Eepersip was

up all that night, dancing singing, swimming and diving in the glorious

moonlight. And then she remembered--to-morrow! and went up on the hill

to say good-bye to the meadow, the pastured hill, and quiet, mossy pool

that she had loved so.

Up on the hill she saw the sun rise.

First the dark blue sky turned grey, and then a pearly streak came on

the horizon as the first ray of the sun appeared; then it turned to

the most heavenly shade of pink and deep rose, and then into the blue

of one of the most gorgeous days Eepersip had ever seen. She gazed

and gazed at the dawn until it grew pale and buttercup yellow, and

finally turned to blue. The sun made a mass of gold sun-sparkles on the

sea, and they blended together from the high hill and formed a solid

splotch of gold, separating at the edges into individual sparkles.

It was a windy day, but the wind was warm, and at first the sea was

only rippling gently and smiling.

Then Eepersip remembered her

little sister Fleuriss, and she wished her already there to share that

beautiful, beautiful day. And off at one end of the beach she found, to

her delight, a little green boat with two oars, which had been washed

in by the storm. Now she had everything she needed, for the clumsy

raft was difficult to manage in the wind, and she might even be blown

so far off that she could never find the cottage again. Now, however,

all was ready.

And so she made her way home, beginning in the

boat, and rowing to where she had first entered the sea; then past the

great precipices over which she had so laboriously clambered as she

went to the sea. over hills, down into valleys, crossing rivers, and

tearing her way through forests, until at last, to her delight, she

arrived at the beautiful meadow where she had spent her first years

of wildness with Chippy, Snowflake and the deer.

The deer did

not remember Eepersip; that was one thing which distressed her. But

a little fawn came cautiously and sniffed at her, obviously wishing

he dared to approach and eat the ferns of her dress. She did not see

Chippy anywhere.

She was soon at her own house, spying around,

and looking in windows. All she could think of was Fleuriss, her little

sister.

III

THE MOUNTAINS

The droning wind

Entwined about the peaks

A golden trail of music...

Far off, the snow-topped mountains

Were sea-waves

Capped with foam.

Eepersip had begun to wonder whether

it would be so easy to take Fleuriss away. She might consent to play,

like Toby; but to run away, like Eepersip?--it was a great problem.

Eepersip must use some other means than simply appearing and asking

her sister to go with her. Perhaps she would entice her on with the

assurance that there was something wonderful waiting. Or maybe she

could show Fleuriss wonder after wonder--point out the beautiful

sea from far away, then lead her on to the little cottage which she

had prepared. And if Fleuriss was cold, or hungry, what should she

do then? Perhaps she would not like roots to eat. Then, suddenly, an

idea: she would dress herself up in wonderful flowers interwoven with

the ferns, she would lure butterflies about her wreaths, she would

bear armfuls of roses and apple-blossoms and lilacs and scatter them

over Fleuriss, she would make her a fern dress, and, thus fascinating

her, draw her away.

Eepersip wondered where she could sleep,

near the house, and yet concealed. She thought of returning to the

meadow, but that would be too far for convenient communication with

Fleuriss. And then she saw a lilac-bush on the eastern side of the

cottage--a great tall lilac-bush, thick and with great branches. It

looked as though she could go into it. And when she tried, she found,

to her great delight, that she could squeeze in, curl up in comfort,

and be absolutely invisible from the outside.

Then she began to

make her fairy array, weaving more ferns into her skirt, and more and

more, until it was thick and flouncy--maiden-hair ferns and Christmas

ferns, evergreen ferns and hay-scented ferns. She tucked flowers all

over her dress--late daffodils, cosmos, wild geraniums, primroses.

She made a girdle of yellow daisies, a crown of golden buttercups;

she plucked a bunch of roses, lilacs, and ferns, binding them with

daisies woven together. A great bouquet of violets decorated her

dress--violets and little white Pyrolas. With a huge hollyhock for her

wand and her arms full of lilacs and roses, she danced in the woods,

thinking how her little sister would wonder--and follow.

That

evening early she climbed an oak which was beside the window of her

former room, and peeped in. The moonlight shone on the face of a child

lying in a little wooden crib. She had fluffy black curls and bright,

snapping black eyes, and she was watching delightedly the shadows of

the branches on her wall and softly humming.

"Oh," breathed

Eepersip, "the little sister. I want her, I want her!" Entranced,

Eepersip watched, sitting in a crotch just outside the window--watched

her as she lay there, tracing with her finger the curving patterns

on her wall-paper; as she played her hands in the moonlight and the

waving shadows on her wall. And after a while the humming died away,

the finger ceased to stroke the wall, her eyes closed, and in a moment

she was gently sleeping. Before Eepersip went down she left a fair

sprig of apple-blossoms on Fleuriss's bed--apple-blossoms that, with

difficulty, she had brought up the tree. When she went back to her

lilac-bush she imagined Fleuriss's surprise, when she should wake, to

see them on her bed; imagined Fleuriss following her, all fascinated

by butterflies and sweet flowers; imagined her little sister climbing

mountains with her, eating berries and roots, swimming and diving and

dancing; and--Her thoughts began to grow more and more fantastic

--the smell of lilacs intoxicated her--and she went to sleep.

In the morning she climbed the tree again. Fleuriss was just

waking. Her eyes were turned toward the lovely oak-tree, watching

the sunlight playing on the emerald leaves. She caught a glimpse of

Eepersip as she vanished around the trunk.

"Oh, Mother," she

called softly. "I saw a nymph! She smiled at me, and went away."

"Hush, child," said Mrs. Eigleen, coming upstairs and stroking

gently the silky black hair. "You were only dreaming."

"No,

Mother," returned the child, "I was awake. I _saw_ a nymph,

really."

Mrs. Eigleen only smiled.

And then Fleuriss saw

the flowers. "O Mother," she cried, " did you bring those to me?" Mrs.

Eigleen was wonderstruck.

"Why, no!" she answered.

"Maybe

that nymph left them here."

Mrs. Eigleen was astounded enough

not to contradict her. "Perhaps," she said.

Eepersip descended

again and ran off to her safe hiding-place in the lilac-bush. "She is

so, so lovely!" she thought. "I want her more and more."

In a

short time little Fleuriss appeared with Mrs. Eigleen. "Fleuriss," said

her mother, "you may play here in the garden, but don't go outside it,

and don't climb the trees."

"All right, Mother."

"And

don't run off and worry me as you did once before." She had _not_

forgotten Eepersip. Perhaps she scented something in the air. Those

flowers troubled her.

"No, I won't."

Mrs. Eigleen

went in, and Fleuriss began to run about and play. Then Eepersip

stepped out from under the bush, and the lovely butterflies, lured

by her flowers, fluttered and hovered around her.

"Oh," said

Fleuriss," goodness, how you frightened me. Sit down on the grass,

and talk with me. And _how_ do you get those butterflies? They

always fly away from me."

"Listen, Fleuriss," said Eepersip.

"I am Eepersip, who ran away. The butterflies and birds all love me

and come to me in great flocks when I call them. And I want you. I

want to take you with me to live wild, and eat leaves and berries with

the birds--sweet red berries. And if you come the butterflies will

gather around you, too. They will not any other way. And look at all

my flowers! Butterflies love my flowers."

"Oh, did _you_

bring me those _bee-yoo-ti-ful_ flowers?"

"Yes, I did. Come!"

"Oh," answered Fleuriss, "and wouldn't it be funny

if Mother came out and found me not here!"

"And think--the

birds, the butterflies, the flowers! Look, I'd dress you like this,

with ferns and flowers and butterflies. And what fun we could have!

We would dance and sing and chase each other amongst the fluttering

leaves."

"Oo, I could never catch you."

"No, but I could

catch you, and that would be as much fun."

"But Mother doesn't

like me to eat leaves, and berries all the time make one sick."

"But we would not have berries all the time. We would dig up sweet

white roots and wash them clean; and _m-m!_ they are good, little

sister Fleuriss. We would have honey. The bees gather honey from the

flowers, which they would share with us."

"Bees sting," said

Fleuriss, shrinking away; "they sting, and they hurt, Eepersip."

"Oh, but the bees love us all so they don't sting us," answered

Eepersip. "It's only the people that try to hurt them that they sting.

We wouldn't hurt them."

"Oh, _Eepersip!_ the leaves and

butterflies, and--and honey--_m-m!_ But I oughtn't, really," she

said, backing off toward the house.

"Oh, come," said Eepersip,

"come, don't go away. Your Mother wouldn't care; she would love to see

how happy you were. _Please_ come." And Eepersip's hands went out

in supplication, scattering over Fleuriss wreaths of flowers, sprays

of berries, crimson, gold, frosty white.

"Oh, how beautiful!"

exclaimed the little girl. But when she looked up, Eepersip had

vanished.

Suddenly the door opened and Mrs. Eigleen stepped

out. Eepersip had darted under the welcome branches of an apple-tree,

whose thick blossoms kept her from sight.

"How sweet it smells!"

said Mrs. Eigleen--"just as if a fairy had been here. Where did

those flowers come from, Fleuriss?"

"Oh," answered Fleuriss,

"I saw the most beautiful girl. She brought me flowers and called

me 'little _sister'_ and wanted me to go away with her!"

Pale and weak from fright, Mrs. Eigleen took Fleuriss by the hand

and dragged her roughly into the house.

Eepersip sat down under

the apple-tree in ecstasy. "I saw her," she said softly, "I saw her

and talked to her, and--oh, how dear she is! But I _do_

wish she hadn't told about me." She waited there, and in a short time

Fleuriss appeared again, running.

"Eepersip, Eepersip," she

cried, "where are you?"

In a moment Eepersip had her arms around

her waist, kissing her and hugging her.

"Are you coming?" she

asked; "have you decided to come, Fleuriss?"

"Y-y-es," said

Fleuriss, "I really have, Eepersip. I thought all dinner time, and

couldn't eat, I was so 'xcited! But we must go quickly now, or they

will run after us."

So they ran quickly into the woods--ran

amid the trees and flowers until they were far from the house. Eepersip

showed her little sister how to dance, and they danced together. She

also showed her how to leap and run fast, and Fleuriss was delighted.

When they grew tired, they sat down together and made fern dresses and

flower wreaths. Fleuriss followed Eepersip's example, casting aside

her dress, shoes, and stockings.

"Oh, how 'licious the grass

feels on my bare toes!" she said, "and the soft moss. Eepersip, I feel

just like a nymph." (A slight pause.) "When I saw the flowers I said:

'Mother, I think a _nymph_ left them there,' and she said: 'Oh,

no, there aren't any nymphs. You're only dreaming!' _Are_ there

nymphs, Eepersip?"

"Oh, yes, Fleuriss, and if we dance and run

and dress just like them, we'll pretend _we're_ nymphs, too."

"But why can't we _see_ them, Eepersip?"

"Oh, we can,

if we look very hard. They're all around in the trees, the flowers,

and the woods. _Sometimes_ we can't see them, and they turn into

butterflies so we can. I can see them."

"Well, sometimes," said

Fleuriss thoughtfully, "it seems as if they were everywhere--when it's

windy, you know, and sunny, and there are shadows. In my garden it's

so beautiful I think there must be nymphs. I can _feel_ them,

not exactly see."

There was a pause.

Then--"Where we

going now, Eepersip?" for Eepersip was gradually working off to a hill

which was a peak of Mount Varcrobis, north of Eiki-ennern Peak.

"Fleuriss," said Eepersip, with a strange emotion in her voice,"

have you ever seen the sea?"

"No, but I heard Mother talking

about it once. She said maybe you had gone down there; and she told me

it was lots of blue water, and there were boats there. Did you really

go there?"

"Yes; it's _so_ beautiful, Fleuriss. The sun

makes the waves sparkle like gold, and the great white gulls with their

long, narrow wings go gliding, circling over the water, sometimes

plunging down and catching fish underneath. And there is white sand

there, soft sand, and shells and pretty pebbles, and little fishes

swimming. And when it's windy the waves come dashing up on the rocks,

flinging spray high in the air. And there is sea-weed, too, Fleuriss,

green sea-weed that goes floating up and down as the waves stir it.

And corals, too. Oh, my little sister, it's so, so beautiful. I would

show you how to leap into it from the rocks, and how to swim--to

be a mermaid and play with the gulls and the fishes, dressed all in

sea-weeds!"

"Oh, Eepersip I let's go _now!_"

"And I

have a little cottage down there for you to live in--a pretty little

cottage just like your home."

"Oh, how nice!"

"And we

shall go riding up and down on the great waves, Fleuriss, while the

sea-gulls scream over our heads. We shall go 'way out of sight of land

and find islands and rocks out there. And the waves are tremendous

when it's windy--very windy."

"Oo--"

"Fleuriss!" And

Eepersip caught her little sister in her arms--glad that she had

succeeded in entrancing her with the sea.

"But, Eepersip,"

said Fleuriss, doubtfully, "where _are_ we going now?"

"I

thought, Fleuriss, that we'd go to that great hill over there--do you

see?"

"Yes."

"Go over there so that you can see from 'way

of how beautiful it is."

"Oh yes; I'm crazy to see it!"

Eepersip saw that this hill was wooded on one side, but on the far

side it was like a pasture--she could see sunlight glinting on it.

On they went, often stopping to pick flowers, to dig up roots, or to

refresh themselves at some little tinkling brook or mossy spring. Once

as they were pushing through a fence of low beech-branches they came

to a spring all surrounded with green moss--oh! so soft. There were

ferns nodding beside it, and one or two strange pink orchids gazed at

themselves admiringly in its surface. At the bottom were white stones.

A cool, green frog plopped into it as they arrived. And Fleuriss was

fascinated. She sat there for a long time, watching him reappear for

air, then bob down again when he saw that they were still watching

him.

Again they came into a great meadow dotted with flowers.

Butterflies with soft wings stroked Eepersip's cheeks caressingly.

Fleuriss danced through the flowers, looking, as Eepersip thought, like

a little butterfly herself. The sky was a heavenly deep blue--a rich

deep blue, yet filled and sparkling with all the gold of the sun and

all the coolth of snow. She could see for miles into it, as if it had

suddenly come nearer than usual. She reached up and could almost see

her fingers touching it. What a strange sensation!

But Fleuriss

had a stranger one. As Eepersip danced along, it seemed as though

her feet barely touched the ground. The flowers and grasses swayed

gently beneath her, but they were not crushed. And Fleuriss felt a

bit of dread coming into her mind--dread of living and staying with

this strange sister. What if she should grow tired of Fleuriss and

run off? Suppose she should change into a tree--a leaf--a sprite?

But Fleuriss fought with this feeling--because she wanted to live

by the ocean, and to do the things that Eepersip had promised.

After a while they came to the foot of the great hill. They

slept down there, near a tiny lakelet, in the soft grass and among

the flowers, with the tinkle, tinkle of a little brook in their ears

all night. The next morning they climbed the hill together, and it

was very steep and rocky. Fleuriss had to be helped often, and grew

tired before she reached the top. But Eepersip lured her on by the

promise of seeing the ocean, and they struggled painfully up.

The sea stretched away to the horizon, blue and sparkling as it

met the sky. Fleuriss was spellbound.

"Eepersip, is that the

sea?" she asked.

"Yes, Fleuriss--the sea, the sea!"

Off to the north was a range of high blue-green hills, and off beyond

them higher ones, and higher--billowing mountains--and beyond them

was a range of snowy peaks, rising, sharply outlined, into the blue.

The lakelet where they had slept was like an opal set with dark green

pines. But those mountains--! never before had Eepersip seen anything

like them. The sea was not nearly so beautiful. And again she felt

that longing which she had felt when she saw the sea--but a more

passionate longing.

And Fleuriss? How could she climb those

great peaks--she, who had had great difficulty even with the little

hill? Well, Fleuriss could grow more used to such things, and then

they would go together. But Fleuriss--Fleuriss barefoot, dressed in

ferns--on those snowy summits! No, it would be impossible for years

and years. She would have to wait--or else go alone.

But the hill had other things than just the view. For there were the loveliest

little winding lanes, and bright open places, and close spots where

they could hardly push through the bushes; great patches of delicious

soft grass, then again enormous smooth-topped rocks from where they had

first found the long-sought vision of the sea. Such feasts as Nature

laid before them! There were great beds of the most delicious wild

strawberries, and nobody to sham them with but the birds. And they and

the birds gobbled them; and it seemed as if the more they ate the more

there were to eat; they ripened all the time. And in this marvellous

place there were such contrasts! They could have anything they wanted

there. There were places where the sun always struck brilliantly, and

cool, shady ones for the hot days--places where not much sun ever

came. There was the loveliest of soft grass, and then again nothing but

brambles and heaps of pointed rocks. There were lanes leading through

the woods occasionally, and there were places where no one would ever

suspect that there was any such thing as a lane. There were little

fairy glades where they could dance together--glades bordered with

ferns and carpeted with moss.

Fleuriss and Eepersip lived there

enchanted day after day, and although they often saw the sea, they did

not wish to leave the hill. Fleuriss spoke about it several times,

but Eepersip would hurriedly change the subject. That range of blued

hills seemed to be calling her--she would forget the sea for a while,

until the next year. After they had stayed where they were for some

time, they would go on and on to the blue hills, and perhaps explore

the great snowy mountains beyond. She could manage with Fleuriss

somehow.

One day they went exploring farther than ever toward

the east. They followed a narrow path, winding, winding through the

bushes. And then it curved around toward the north-east and led through

low laurel-trees, and here Eepersip stopped to make for Fleuriss a

crown of the blossoms. And again the path turned and came on to a

broader gravel road all bordered with gorgeous roses of red and white,

and Fleuriss was very much surprised at their magnificent beauty.

But Eepersip was distressed. So they had come to a place where there

were roads, houses, and people! But as yet they had seen no house.

Eepersip hoped that there would be none, for she was as entranced as

Fleuriss with the beauty of it all. And then they switched off on

another little path, leading southeast on to a wide lawn all bordered

with marvellous roses. Here they danced together a long time. Next

they turned into another gravelled path which led eastward, through

clumps of roses and laurel, downhill and uphill, for a long way; and

then they saw a garden brilliant with colour. Fleuriss was dazed, there

were so many flowering bushes--rhododendron, laurel, honeysuckle,

azalea, quince, and fire-blossom. Hummingbirds, bright emerald and

ruby with moonlight wings, were darting and sparkling about, sipping

honey, resting and quivering on the air.

But soon after they

had discovered the garden, Eepersip said that she was going on a short

journey, coming back in two or three days. "Will you be all right here

alone, little sister?" she said anxiously.

"Oh yes, Eepersip,

and I'm going to find lots of things to show you when you come back.

But where are you going?"

"I'm going--going--to a beautiful

place--and take you there sometime."

"Oh--I see. Can't I go

now?"

"No--because--it would be too hard now. Wait till I go

and find the easiest way for you."

"All right--good-bye!"

And, with a rustle of ferns, Eepersip vanished around a great

rhododendron-bush.

Fleuriss continued her explorations

alone. She saw a gorgeous butterfly come sailing toward her, of yellow

streaked with black. Others followed, and they covered her with soft

wing-caresses, crowning her head with their wings. Fleuriss thought (as

Eepersip had told her) that they were the fairies turning themselves

into butterflies so that she could see them.

Not a mouse stirred

when she wormed her way through the bushes, taking care not to step on

leaves or dry twigs so as to make a noise. And then the sun started to

set and turned the whole sky golden and rose. Fleuriss crept in among

a vine with golden flowers (there was no rich purple fruit yet, only

the lovely flowers) and watched. And, lo! each leaf was quivering, and

on their smooth surfaces was represented another miniature sunset. How

marvellous the rose and gold looked through the mass of trembling green

leaves

Then Fleuriss squeezed her way out of the bush and began

to explore again. Pushing northward in the dim, rosy light, she came

to a smooth lawn of pale green moss. On the other side was a stretch

of woods, then another lawn, of grass this time and smaller; and then

there was a great row of massive pines and beyond them an opaline lake.

And still the sun went down, and the mass of colour became smaller and

brighter, and Fleuriss, who had never seen so much beauty in her little

life, gazed and gazed. The colour faded slowly, slowly, as she watched,

until only a deep flush was left, and it was then that Fleuriss thought

she was in the heart of a giant rose. And--inconceivable--she looked,

and she was. She was sure of it. She could even see the great curling

petals around her. Right at the sun was a burning spot. That was the

pollen of the great flower. And this tiny fire burned and burned until

only one bright red spark was left. Then it too went out, and after

it all the rose colour faded away.

Then Fleuriss turned to the

lake, which also had held in its bright blue surface an image of the

sunset. The sky was deep blue now. The pines looked even darker against

it, and in the lake Fleuriss could see the reflection of the crescent

moon setting. And then she ran down by the side of the lake, and very

dark and strange it looked in the evening. Dipping her little hands

into the clear, crystal water, she drank, for she was thirsty. But she

was too tired to appreciate any more beauty just then, and so she crept

back to her little nest of flowers to go to sleep. Then she heard a

gurgle of sweet silvery music, and she listened spellbound, entranced.

But it was no wicked witch, seeking to entice her by spells: it was

the solitary wood-thrush, that superb singer of the dusk. And then

Fleuriss dropped off to sleep.

The next morning dawned fair,

and she rose bewitched with what she had been through. The sunset and

the silvery notes of the thrush all came back to her. She went down

by the lake. It was very different now. Its blue was sparkling with

the rays of the sun, whereas before it had looked very solitary--an

icy cold blue. There was no beach--just a grassy bank--and in the

shallow water she saw some little silvery fishes swimming and playing

in shoals. And she watched them in their happy play for a long time,

fascinated by the way they raced after each other around the shining

stones and pebbles. Because they were so bright and gleaming, poor

little Fleuriss thought that they were some rare and unheard-of fish,

little dreaming that they were just common minnows.

Eepersip

came back that day in a strange way. Fleuriss was looking down on the

meadowy side of the hill, where the long green grass waved in the wind

and butterflies were fluttering. And as she looked, suddenly--there

was Eepersip standing in front of her. She had come from nowhere--she

was just there without coming at all. Fleuriss was appalled. She

remembered that strange dancing--was her sister about to melt into the

air? Fleuriss stood stock-still.

Finally she raised her head and

said, at first faintly, but with growing enthusiasm: "Oh, Eepersip,

last night there was a great rose, and I was inside it--and I found a

beautiful lake with fishes in it--oh, wonderful fishes of silver--and

the beautiful birdie sang me to sleep in the flowers." And then, her

voice sounding strangely timid: "O Eepersip--I want--Mother--to see

it--so beautiful. I love--it here, but----I know Mother would like

to see it, too. And I guess I can't get along without her. I guess I

can't, Eepersip."

Eepersip was broken-hearted. "But, Fleuriss,"

she said--and Fleuriss shuddered a very little as Eepersip took her

hand--"Fleuriss, if your mother came, she would take you back home,

and you would not be here any more. If she would come to see it, all

right, but she would not--and so you would not see it either. Come

on, show me the lake you found."

Fleuriss was happy in a flash.

Laughing and dancing, she took her sister down to the lake and showed

her the wondrous fishes. They went in bathing together, and Eepersip

showed Fleuriss how to swim, as she had shown Toby. Fleuriss was wild

with joy. Then they splashed each other and played tag in the water.

Eepersip puzzled Fleuriss by swimming under water, and Fleuriss would

scream with delight when she came up in a totally unexpected place.

This new pastime kept them happy for several days.

But again

Fleuriss began to grow miserable--and homesick.

And again

Eepersip resisted this feeling for a long time--two or three weeks of

misery. But at the end of that time she began to think.

To begin

with, she thought about where she had been on that little expedition

of hers. She had been up toward those blue hills to see from nearer

the snowy mountains. She had loved them more and wanted more than ever

to go to them. She asked Fleuriss if she would not like to climb the

high peaks with her. But Fleuriss replied, almost snappishly: "You

know what I want, Eepersip."

Of course this misery weighed down

Eepersip's mind frightfully; she was very uncomfortable. And then she

began to think that after all she would want to be alone when she went

amongst the mountains; Fleuriss would be all right if she were happy,

perhaps, but a miserable companion would be unendurable. Perhaps she

had made a mistake in taking Fleuriss away. Maybe it was true that they

had to go in different directions--that she herself could not live at

home, and that her little sister could not live elsewhere. And even in

Eepersip's untamed heart there was a bit of pity. And she found that

that pity kept growing. How badly the Eigleens must feel, after all!

Once she smothered it with the thought, "No, she will be happy if she

stays long enough, and they will forget her." But it only began to

grow again.

Up to this unhappy time Fleuriss's flowers had not

withered or drooped: in this they were like those of Eepersip. But now

Eepersip noticed that for some peculiar reason hers only stayed fresh

and sweet. And then she thought again about the mountains and about

those poor wasted flowers, and the pity grew and grew.

And one

happy, happy day for Fleuriss, Eepersip led her safely home again.

"Good-bye, Fleuriss," she said. "I'm sorry you wouldn't stay with

me."

"Yes, I know, Eepersip, but I just couldn't. Why don't

you come home--you've been away so long--and Mother cries for you

still. Please come."

"Oh, Fleuriss, I _couldn't_. If I

were to go back home now, I should just die--even with you."

"Good-bye, then. Sometime I'm going to take Mother to see that

beautiful hill."

"But not for a long time?"

"As soon as I can."

"Don't."

"Why?"

"You know. Please don't."

"Well, I'm not sure. I'm going to--pretty soon.

Good-bye, Eepersip--Aren't you _ever_ coming home?"

"Oh, Fleuriss, no!"

"I wish you would."

"But I can't."

"Won't you let me take Mother and Daddy to live over there?"

"Well, after a while--if you want to. I shan't be there."

"Why, where are you going?"

"I'm going to the beautiful,

beautiful white mountains. And then maybe the sea again, Fleuriss--the

sea."

"Oo!"

"Coming?"

"NO! I'll ask Mother to take me to the sea. She will."

"Then--good-bye!"

And

she decked Fleuriss's fern dress with beautiful flowers--a crown of

them and a girdle. A sweet wind arose, carrying the scent of Eepersip's

flowers to Fleuriss. A few butterflies were blown over to her. Eepersip

stood on her tiptoes an instant: then, quick as a flash, she whirled

about and bounded off, free--relieved of a gigantic burden.</p> <hr>

<p>She went up to the lovely hill and stayed there a few days, amid the

dancing butterflies and the gorgeous roses. At the lake she would dream

hour after hour and watch the little jewelled minnows playing about

the white stones and shining pebbles. In the evening she crept into a

great bed of thick vines with flowers of white and gold, and listened

to the lapping of the waves and watched the twinkling fireflies. They

were her favourites, those poor ignorant little insects. She loved them

as well as the delicate, gauzy butterflies, the sweeping swallows with

their slim white wings, or the great gold-and-black bees. She adored

them all, but the tiny blue-black fireflies, with thin gauze wings and

the spot of phosphorescence showing now and then, were perhaps the

loveliest of all. How she liked to see them playing about at dusk,

sparkling and gleaming--little stars of the trees, in golden waves

across the sky.

Sometimes, when they began to come out, she

would go forth and dance and skip with myriads of them clustered in

her hair. Around each invisible fern and blossom in her dress would

gather a row of the little insects, until finally one could have seen

her entire form bordered with fireflies. And besides these which

alighted on her dress, thousands gathered swarming about her, so that

her head was entirely hidden in a maze of gold.

Sometimes she

would sleep at night and in the daytime play with the butterflies,

birds, and bees. But now she began to sleep more and more in the day

and play about at night.

One cool morning Eepersip went down

the lovely hill that she and Fleuriss had found. She walked down and

then out toward the pastured side of the hill. Here she stayed for a

long time. She lived in the golden smell of steeple-bush, and instead

of the wild strawberries that she had had on the hill she found great

crops of blueberries. And in this pasture she had a sample of a new

food--checkerberries. To be sure, she had eaten the leaves often

enough, but to see the waxen white berries was quite new. These also

she tasted and found greatly to her liking. She would lie and eat

hundreds of those white berries which tasted of the woods. They were

almost as good as the blueberries.

Now this pasture formed

a steep hill, and one delicious morning when a soft, warm wind was

blowing rather strongly, Eepersip climbed to the top of it. And oh,

what a sight met her dark brown eyes! Far and near, far and near rose

mountains, mountains, mountains! Stretching away, fold after fold,

layer after layer, rose marvellous blue peaks, with the dazzling light

of the sun brightening the white granite at some of their tops. Peak

after peak rose up around her, lake after lake stretched out in the dim

blue distance, with the sun striking them until they were a mass of

gold, like great precious stones in that setting of purple mountains.

She could make out three or four farmhouses, but no villages. She stood

there entranced, watching.

Then down she dashed, through the

tall grass sprinkled with buttercups and daisies. It seemed miles. but

it also seemed no more than seconds. At last she found herself by the

shore of a cobalt lake. It was almost perfectly round, with a group of

tiny green islets sprinkled in it like a handful of emerald beads. No

house could Eepersip see, for the lake was entirely surrounded with low

green-blue hills. The shore was for the most part soft white sand, fine

as pepper. With a cry of joy at the discovery of this beautiful little

lake Eepersip dashed into it and swam in the cool of those waters from

the mountains. And then she saw, playing up and down in the shallow

water just off one of those many beaches, a shoal of slim fishes.

They were all silver except one or two that were gold, and they had

rather bulging red eyes.

For a long time Eepersip watched them.

Then something caused her to look up. This something was the strange,

shrill cry of a bird above her. She looked up suddenly and saw the

bird. But she did not watch it, for the glint of something white--a

strange whiteness which she had never seen before--caught her eye.

She gazed long upon it, until, when her eyes became accustomed, she

was able to make out the outline of a peak, going up sharp as a tooth,

with bumps of smoother outline stretching away, away into the blue

immensity of space on either side.

"Oh," said Eepersip, " a

dream! Oh, what a beautiful dream! But--I feel so wide awake."

She gazed and gazed, silent.

"Oh," she said again, after

a while, "it cannot be a dream, it mustn't be a dream!"

She

gazed and gazed again.

"Oh," she repeated, "I must go there at

once! The snowy mountains!"

She plunged into the beautiful,

icy lake and swam across it with never a thought of the beauty in

the green depths around her. Her eyes were fixed upon that one thing

only. Soon she reached the opposite shore, consisting only of thick

woods. Her heart--that heart beautiful, yet with a certain sense of

childlikeness in it which had never left her--was mad for a glimpse

of those mountains. It was then that she felt as if there were a great

bird in her, pulling her, hauling her forward, regardless of the thorns

and nettles which tore her delicate dress of ferns and blossoms. At

last she got through the forest and found herself in an open meadow,

with the wondrous mountain before her and warm rain falling gently.

She saw a farmhouse, and as she went along the simple peasant farmer

saw her and muttered to his wife: "Look there, Mary." Mary looked, and

then she said: "Ay, God hath taken this child into his care--ignorance

demands mercy."

A moment of intense thought. She gazed and

gazed, bewitched. Then she gave, or tried to give, a little laugh.

It did not sound. "Oh," she tried to say, "how _queer_ I feel!

I believe I never felt so queer." And indeed she did feel queer. For

she felt the feeling of speaking to her heart. She was talking, it

seemed to her, loudly, but when, even in the midst of her talk, she

listened, nothing sounded.

After a few seconds, it seemed, she

ran on, leaping through the wet. Raindrops gathered on the ferns and

the flowers of her dress, outlining them with the pearly water. She

looked like a rain-fairy. Hour after hour passed, and she went like

the wind itself; yet she did not tire. At last she found herself near

the foot of that wondrous mountain, shimmering with snow-fields, cold

white against a deepening night sky.

That night a bird of modest

wood-colour, with speckled breast, sang of moonlight; and, rippling

faintly, softly, came echoes from his silver-tongued mate. They sang,

and they answered, and the moon-frost-tipped pines were quiet, and

clouds floated near, snowy palaces of silence. Spellbound, Eepersip

was borne away to fairy kingdoms where she danced and where

birds sang the only melody in the world.

The next morning

the sun came out and shone through every raindrop in splendid crimsons

and purple-greens. Eepersip looked about her and discovered a little

plant with a peculiar flower of white and crimson. She found that its

leaves were quite delicious, unlike anything that she had had in the

meadow or by the shore of the sea. They were green--a strange pale

green, delicately outlined and veined in marble white and pale gold.

Eepersip loved their pleasant flavour, but could not bear to touch

them, they were so beautiful.

Then she looked up and beheld the

strange rough outline of the mountain, and far in the distance, almost

on the top, was a great snow-field, on which the sun shone directly,

covering it incredibly with brilliant tints and shades of gold. And,

oh, the bright green foliage, shining in the dear golden light!

"Fairyland!" whispered Eepersip. "I loved the meadow, I loved the

sea more, but even before I am really _in_ the mountains, I love

them the best of all." Then, after a pause, she added: "That snow-field

of gold, these heavenly little flowers--oh, such beauty!"

After

a few more moments of breathless gazing, gazing upon everything, she

started up the mountain. The first few hundred yards she followed

a faintly marked trail which led through dense woods, over great

boulders covered with dark green moss. Occasionally a little rushing

brook trickled across her path. For quite a way Eepersip kept climbing

over the huge boulders, and the path was very mossy. After a while it

began to grow fainter and harder to follow, and at last it was shut

off entirely by the thick bushes and trees which surrounded it. Here

she sat down to rest and to think a while.

She looked about and

came upon a bubbling spring, at which she drank. No water she had ever

found was like this. It tasted of the strong, delicious mountain air.

She drank deeply, and, when she had quenched her thirst, continued

her way. Here flowers which made her think of foam at sea--white,

star-like, with silver-tipped petals--twined themselves among the

trees mingled with wild roses--dawn-flowers of deep pink or sun-bright

yellow. Strange orchids grew about, many of them pure white and

fringed like fluffy clouds. One had green blossoms with long whitish

spurs--mystic flowers on tall spikes with two smooth leaves. Yellow

lady-slippers made her think of butterflies with folded wings, or of

the sun peeping out from dark clouds. But the loveliest of all were

pink orchids--hosts of them with more deeply tinted lips fringed

like fairies' fingers: hosts of them on slender stems, each stem a

dawn-sprite's wand.

"Like the dawn I saw once," she thought,

"when snow-pink fringey flowers wreathed the sky. The sun was pleased

and smiled. I danced for him, and the bobolinks and skylarks greeted

him with song." There were tall flowers, too, pink silk beneath white

tissue, with very dark and curious leaves up the stalks among the

blossoms. Butterflies were playing like sun rays, winging softly from

flower to flower. And as she went on she passed through forests of

thick bushes and poisonous thorns, open pine-groves, and great pastures

smelling of hay-scented ferns and budding steeple-bush. All the time

the path, or rather the easiest way through the thick bushes, had been

fairly level, but now it began to shoot up steeply, and it was all

Eepersip could do to keep herself from sliding back in an avalanche of

pebbles and stones. A bit of tough scrambling followed, and at last

she broke out on a comparatively level piece of ground. on one side

of which was a deep ravine in which she heard a brook rushing and

rippling. On the other side of the ravine was a peak of the mountain,

crowned with snow and with the sun flashing upon it.

Eepersip

longed to see the brook, which, by the sound, she judged to be quite

large. She was not actually afraid to go down over those steep walls

of dirt and sand, but she _was_ rather afraid that, once being

down, she would not be able to get up again. So on she went, and it

grew so steep that, even by digging her feet into every crevice and

clutching the roots of the trees, which were getting much scarcer and

more stunted, she could just manage to cling on.

But at last

a change came. She stood on that high peak, on which there were only

bare rocks and a little snow, no roots or plants. On either side it

went down, down, and it was getting late in the afternoon. She could

see nothing to do. Still the highest peak was many miles ahead, and

she knew that she could not make it in the remaining daylight. So

she climbed warily down into a little crevice, where a few ferns and

luscious mountain blueberries managed to grow. She ate a supper of

these and of another hardy little berry which she found; then slept in

peace till daybreak, her tired mind dreaming of strange things--of

deep palaces at the bottom of the sea and snow palaces at the tops

of the mountains; of fairies, nymphs, and elves.

In the

morning she breakfasted on the mountain blueberries again, and found,

much to her delight, that they quenched her thirst almost as well as

water. After her juicy breakfast she went on down for about a mile;

then up, up again on sheer walls of rock, where there was not a sign

of a plant of any kind. After a stretch of difficult climbing snow

again began to appear, as the slope became more level. Eepersip went

down through a snug hollow in the rocks, where it was thick with small,

scrubby trees and where very little snow had managed to penetrate the

thick branches.

Oh, but it was cold up here on these tremendous

heights; the wind was keen and shrilly whistling. But, however cold,

it was a mountain wind, an exhilarating mountain wind which made

Eepersip leap into the air--leap and dance as on the meadow. Then,

after she had rested a while under the welcome branches of the stunted

firs and eaten tart mountain blueberries again, she went on, up out

of the hollow and on to the solid rock covered with a deep snow, into

which she sank at every step. Another mile she trudged. along, pulling

herself through it. And still the mighty peak retreated before her, so

that she could make no progress--or, at least, it seemed so. It seemed

as far away and as faint in the snowy distance as from where she had

been when the night had come on--a dreaming peak caressed with fingers

of mist.

At last the ground went up abruptly again. However

steep, Eepersip found it much easier, being there wasn't so much snow.

It rose and rose, becoming more gradual, until she stood on another

high peak, looking off over a tremendous range of mountains. Large

flakes of snow were falling gently, so that she could not see much of

these. She thought that she was now on the highest peak, and she sat

down to wait for the snow to cease and give her a clear view. After a

time it did; and then, and not until then, she saw another peak, the

true summit of the mountain, going up, up, and up on the other side of

a deep valley into which she would have to descend. After sucking a

few handfuls of the pure mountain snow, she set off with a light heart

and a happy spirit, her feet falling fast through the light drifts.

After a while she got down into the valley; and here she came upon a

brooklet full of icicles, winding through the long ravine and dashing

over the green slimy rocks in great cascades of rattling icicles and

foam. Eepersip drank deeply, and was refreshed.

Then, after

resting a few moments, she went on, up that steep wall of snow and

rock which would take her to the longed-for summit. Eepersip counted

sixteen brooklets rushing down over it, carrying hundreds of icicles

with their currents, foaming and dashing with spray and myriads of

shiny iridescent bubbles.

Across brook after brook she went,

watching the colours change in the dazzling snowflakes. The sun was

shining brilliantly now, making everything unimaginably beautiful in

magnificent shades of ruby, copper, silver-gold, emerald, and sapphire.

Each snowflake seemed covered with an almost invisible layer of tiny

sparkling gems. And once, when Eepersip sat down in a deep snow-bank

to watch and to rest, the sun happened to strike directly on one of

the many brooklets that went dashing down the mountain-side, making it

a blinding ribbon of silver and gold. Occasionally Eepersip saw the

blossoms of the beautiful talatuna, with ruby-red leaves and blossoms

of pale green and changing white. She thought that the leaves were

_all_ red, but when the wind flipped one over she saw that their

backs were moon-white, pale but glistening.

On she went,

through the incredible beauty of the fairyland about her. "Oh," she

murmured to herself, "how marvellous it is! Oh, fairies, fairies." She

whirled happily around. She had felt a few delicate touches on her

shoulders, and at once the air was a-flock with glistening snowflakes.

Each fern in her dress was bordered with a row of the fairy things,

and her autumn hair was crowned white.

After a while a slight

breeze sprang up and the big flakes whirled faster. The breeze rose and

rose until it was a strong, cold wind, and she could not see a foot

before her. The only thing to do was to wait for clear weather. But

in that she was disappointed, for it was growing darker and darker,

and at last she realized that night was coming on. So she lay down and

ate a supper of snow, as it fell and fell.

All night the

snow whirled and whirled, and in the morning Eepersip was completely

buried. It was a long, hard task to find her way out, or rather to push

her way out, for almost as fast as the snow fell it froze into ice,

so that there was on top of Eepersip a thick layer of ice. But just

before she decided to give up and wait for warmer weather, she broke

through. Out into the bright sunlight she came; and lo and behold! all

the ferns on her dress, and the dainty blossoms, together with her

hair, were covered with a layer of ice which shimmered and sparkled

in the sun like jewels set in something brighter than the brightest

gold.

But as soon as she came out into the sun the ice began

to melt and run off in all directions, and as she skipped and jumped

about she was almost hidden in the shower of water-drops which flew

from her as she ran.

And how beautiful, how fairy-like, she

was! Each fern was covered with a thin layer of the melting ice, and

the crown of pink blossoms around her curly hair was frozen likewise,

their fair colour persisting through the ice. Once in a while, when

the sun touched her, she was a blaze of colour--of silver and gold,

with here and there a splotch of brilliant red as the sun struck a red

flower.

After she had found that there was nothing to be eaten

except snow, she sucked a few handfuls, flavoured with the petals

of the flowers which she wore. Then she went on, through paradises

of silver, gold, and red, through deep hollows of shining green.

Everything was something besides white, and the world that was in

Eepersip's range of vision was fairyland.

But, as she went on,

clouds began to float in--little white clouds. They grew thicker and

thicker, until, before she had come near the highest peak, there was

nothing but pearly mist--scudding grey mist, curling into fantastic

shapes as it rose. She could see nothing, and she sat down in the snow

to wait. That night a gale came up, whistling and howling around the

peaks, reminding Eepersip of that storm at sea. What an awesome sound

it made! It sleeted, too, and when she awoke the next morning the snow

was covered with a crust. The mist had partly cleared, and she pushed

on again. She went through icy hollows and up on shimmering peaks,

until, finally, she saw near her that long-sought summit, and, with a

shout of joy, she dashed up. Fast she went, but when she really reached

it at last, the mist had closed in again, the wind was up, and it was

sleeting furiously. It was only through a break in the mist that she

had made the summit at all.

The next morning it was still

misty, but not nearly so thick. There was even a faint purple glow

over on the eastern horizon where the sun was rising. Occasionally

the mist would break open above, and she would see glimpses of blue

sky--the deep, deep blue of that day in the meadow with Fleuriss. And

lying all around on the boulders were frost-feathers. When Eepersip

first saw them she thought that she was dreaming. But no, they were

really there, delicate ferns and feathers with scalloped edges--ferns

and feathers of frost.

"Oh, mountain-fairies--fairies have

left them here," she said quietly. Some were as long as her forearm,

and others tiny--oh, so tiny; some were almost round like the inner

feathers of a bird, and others long and narrow like the outer plumes.

Down in a hollow were some stunted firs, laden with snow and covered

with those fronds of ivory chiselled by wind-sprites, lovelier than

anything Eepersip had ever seen, lovelier than anything ever made by

Nature. No, Nature could never have carved them, Eepersip thought.

The fairies--fairies!

Once she found a hollowed rock entirely

lined with them, like a fairy's crystal palace with strange shadowy

recesses. They crowded everywhere they could find room, and sometimes,

when there was no other place, rippled on the snow. They overlapped on

the rocks, and hung from windward crags, pointing into the wind. And

behold! Eepersip's dress and her head were covered with small ones,

like a diadem--a fairy crown and fairy ornaments. Moving gently,

so as not to disturb them from where they rested, she wandered from

one cluster to another, looking carefully at each one, noting each

special pattern, each magic tracery. All day she followed the winding

rabbit-trails amid the feathery firs.

The sun, too, had been

pushing out. Now the mist opened in one direction, and Eepersip caught

a fleeting glimpse of snowy peaks; but it closed again. It opened

a trifle longer in another direction, and Eepersip saw, 'way down

below, first low blue-green foothills and lakes golden with the sun,

then higher purple hills, melting into range after range of billowing

mountains, and valley after valley filled with white clouds rapidly

lifting. The mist shut in. Another direction opened in the same way,

with hills fading into mountains; and far off on the horizon was

another range of snow mountains, lying just under great white clouds.

There were clouds hanging over the valleys too, and they cast strange

shadows on the sunlit trees far below. When the mist shut in, the

golden lakes seemed to stay the longest. and after the mountains had

entirely disappeared they could he seen as if hanging in mid-air,

limpid pools of gold. And more sides opened, and more, the waits

growing shorter in between, until, on a gust of mountain wind, the last

of the mist went scudding away, banished, and the sun broke out into

the blue sky. The snow sparkled, the mountains sparkled, the lakes and

rivers sparkled, the frost-feathers sparkled, the air itself sparkled.

And the mountains of the range that Eepersip was in, crowned with

snow, gleamed like gold. Down on one side of the snowy peak dashed a

great river, green and swirling, covered with clots of foam. Sometimes

it would cascade over the rocks throwing up a fountain of spray, and

sometimes it would slip over a smooth slide, then, whirling round and

round in a rock basin, thunder down another great cliff in a shower

of bubbles, rattling icicles, and foam. It not its way through a

green hollow in the snow, and where it tunnelled under the snow-hanks

it was overhung with long, gleaming icicles.

Eepersip danced

in the snow, among the frost-feathers, all that day--danced like a

mountain sprite, leaping high, then running gracefully in a shower of

water-drops which flew from her as the frost-feathers melted in the

warmth of the sunlight. She danced down to the river and played there

a while--played with the white foam.

At sunset she was again

at the peak of her mountain. The sky was flushed with magic; a great

cloud in the west became a brilliantly fringed with gold and red-gold,

the east was all submerged in a lilac sea, and a delicate laciness

of pink trailed across the zenith. Sunset fairies alighted on the

snow-peaks: they were fiery for a moment, and all the great snow-fields

were flaming. Then the colour faded to pink on the summits. But in

the sky Nature still flung about her colours wildly--fire was in the

zenith, the long bank of clouds was vividly fringed with red-gold, and

there to the south it changed to caverns of shadowed pink and strange

violet. Seas and bays and cloud islands formed out of it--seas of

a strange greenish rose. Then one thrill and flame of gold spread

about the whole earth; the snow at her feet was shadowy gold, and a

pathway of it danced upon the air 'way to the horizon. It played upon

each frost-feather; the eastern mountains were flushed with this soft

gold.

And then, dizzy with the colour and the beauty, Eepersip

fell asleep, her fingers clutching the rosy snow.

The next morning the frost-feathers had almost disappeared underneath a

new snowfall. The air was full of its fresh scent, as it came down

gently in tremendous flakes. Here and there Eepersip saw one of the

lovely blossoms of the talatuna, with those same ruby-red leaves. How

beautiful they were, growing in great clusters, just peeping through

the snow! Once in a while a pale cream-coloured mountain moth would

flit before her. Occasional gusts brought swarms of tiny bottle-green,

white-winged snow-beetles, and the air was a-buzz with them. Sometimes

a blue or white insect like a firefly would hover past, a strange red

light gleaming about its transparent body.

On and on Eepersip explored, seeing nothing but the wonderland about her--the

fairy palaces of snow, the fluttering, hovering insects, and the beautiful

mountain flowers. Following the icy river down, she came sometimes to a

great cascade of the green water--a cascade coming over one of those

great cliffs, washing down the snow, throwing up fountains and clouds

of spray in its furious descent. Sometimes it cut under the banks,

making a green cave hung with icicles gleaming strangely. One of these

had been made when the river was in flood; now it was large enough for

Eepersip to stand in, and, wading in water about up to her knees, she

went back into its innermost recesses, where the roar of the stream was

muffled. There were fish there--trout playing in the whirlpools and

riding swiftly with the current. She found some odd bright stones and

gleaming pebbles in this mysterious place, silent save for the deadened

rush of water.

Sometimes, again, the rushing brook took such

steep course that Eepersip was forced to make a detour into the woods

for a little way, through clumps of the firs, now growing less stunted,

but hung with icicles which clicked together in the wind, sounding to

Eepersip like fairy castanets. Even at this high altitude, she saw

occasionally a white pine, each cluster of pale green needles laden

with snow--tufts of snow which seemed to make little faces peering

out from the tree. Bursts of happiness would overwhelm her now and

then, and she would leap high and dart like some frightened deer or

mountain nymph.

Once she found beautiful little violet-shaped

pink flowers with bowed heads and feathery leaves--snow-pinks blooming

there, thrusting their buds from the snow itself. She tucked a spray

of them into her dress of fluttering ferns.

And then she would

return to the river and follow it again. When the moon came, dappling

the foamy water with silver, she watched it as it dipped down its

forehead in the stream and touched the treetops with magic. Then she

would go on again through the moonlit night. Once she came to a place

where the brook separated, and she had a difficulty choosing which

branch to follow.

And when the russet dawn reappeared, tipping

the mountains with apple-blossom and fire, she had followed it to its

goal in the very meadow from where she had started--a pool hitherto

unseen by her. About a hundred feet across it was, beached with clean

white pebbles. In it bloomed water-lilies, fragrant and white, with

centres of gold; strange red flowers, too, she saw on the bottom,

growing between the pebbles. Dragonflies with crackling wings swept

over it in circles. She saw, too, a shoal of tiny fishes of a brownish

colour, striped with yellow. They would suddenly dart forward as if

something had frightened them, and then poise themselves stock-still,

mimicking so many sticks in the shadows of the abundant lily-pads.

She was wading about in the pool when suddenly--where there had

been ground for her foot to rest on, nothing was there. The bottom

of the pool under her foot had slid forward and collapsed! Suddenly

"Clug-glug, clug-glug, chugarum, glug!" reached her, as a big

bull-frog's nose appeared by the side of a lily-pad. A second later the

frog diked up on the lily-pad and stared at Eepersip with his goggly

eyes. She burst out laughing, he looked so ridiculous staring at her

like that.

She stayed in the meadow, playing gaily among the

leaves and flowers. Butterflies of all the colours of the rainbow swept

over it in great flocks. Flowers bloomed so thickly that there was

hardly any grass--white ones with waxen petals. striped and bordered

with heavy golden bands; red ones with centres of dark green-gold;

great blossoms of pink and purple, whose petals fluttered about in the

breeze like butterflies.

One morning she was awakened early by

"Peep, peep, twitter-itter-ee-e-e-e-e-e, twit chirup, twitter-ee-e-e,

twit!" She looked up and saw a great flock of snow-white birds with

long narrow wings. They were flying northward. The flock was much

more gigantic than Eepersip had supposed, for it kept on until she

began to think that it was going round and round. But no: after ten

or fifteen minutes the sky cleared, and she heard faintly in the

distance: "Twitter-itter-ee-e-e-e-e, _ee-e-per-s-sip!_ e-e-p,

e-ep, chirup."

Day after day she danced here, playing, as on

the first meadow, the butterflies, flowers, and swallows. And now,

as she danced, she seemed to float through the air, her feet almost

motionless. Sometimes she would leap high and come down--_float_

down--quite slowly. She seemed to have no weight at all, and a breeze

would almost lift her off the ground and hold her up in the air.

Indeed, when she ran with the wind behind her she would be _blown_

along--blown like a leaf just above the flowers.

One day

she was dancing there--dancing and leaping in the long grass, amid

the blossoms. Butterflies drifted over the sunny field--butterflies

of red and yellow, blue and green, black and white, orange and purple.

How gracefully they flew; how delicately they alighted on the flowers;

how fairy-like they were, hovering for an instant over some blossom,

then dipping their wings and starting off again! Eepersip felt as

though--as though she were going to be one of them; as though she were

so happy that she must fly about with them, sip the honey from the

flowers with them.

As she was thinking happily she heard a few

faint peeps, which became louder as she danced toward a certain part of

the field. Then there was a desperate twitter right at her feet, and,

looking down she saw a yellow fledgling hopping towards her. She picked

him up carefully and saw that he had broken his left wing. She worked

a moment with her hands and pulled the bone into place. Then she made

him a comfortable nest of grass and set out to see where he had come

from. Looking up, she saw a nest from which a bird was peering about

anxiously. Straightway she took the little one from the nest _she_

had made, and climbed the tree with it to its own nest; upon which the

mother-bird gave a twitter of joy.

After doing this Eepersip

descended the tree and continued her happy dance with the butterflies

until evening. Then they all found shelters under the leaves, and the

stars came out, one by one. Presently Eepersip spied a flicker in the

meadow--then another and still another, until the fireflies were

out in full play. They gathered around Eepersip in one flaming mass,

kissing her with their feathery wings. Making her way over to the pool,

she saw her reflection, a shimmer of gold.

A light darted out

toward her from the woods; then another and yet another, until there

were hundreds of lights flickering and blinking at her from all corners

of the great field--the lights of elves and gnomes, little fairies

of the field. And she danced happily among them--danced until the

dawn appeared on the horizon, sending away the darkness and making

the stars fade into space. It flushed the whole sky with rose, sent

arms of it even as far as the west; arms and streamers of colour which

paled toward their tips. Little white clouds grew pink, too, and the

colour was reflected on the distant mountain-tops. Again the snow-field

seemed to become fire--fire which was soon quenched by the coolness

of the snow. As the sun sent its first golden beams above the horizon,

the colour faded, turned to yellow, and soon entirely disappeared.

Then the sky was blue--deep, quivering blue, with the fluffy clouds

like pearls in an azure setting.

Suddenly Eepersip saw that

she was dressed in a flouncy array of spring crocuses and maidenhair

ferns. Lovely flowers of pink and yellow were entwined in her hair, and

butterflies fluttered around her. She danced happily and leaped high

in the air. How free and light she felt in the lovely dress that had

been given her!

That day Eepersip was even happier than usual.

She floated about, visiting each flower, each bush and tree. She played

games with the butterflies, the games she had played on the old meadow,

that first summer of her life in the House without Windows. When she

rested, she sat on top of a laurel-bush, and not a twig bent beneath

her. The slightest breeze blew her about, changed the direction of

her dance. Butterfly after butterfly flew to her, flock after flock,

as if they had some message to tell her; and after each visit she was

happier than before. Yes, they were messengers, these happy creatures;

messengers who came to whisper her a secret--a secret from Nature,

a secret of the beautiful meadow, a secret from the fairies.

And, when the sun again tinged the sky with colour, a flock of these

butterflies, of purple and gold and green, came swooping and alighted

on her head in a circle, the largest in front. Others came in myriads

and covered her dress with delicate wing-touches. Eepersip held out

her arms a moment. A gold-and-black one alighted on each wrist. And

then--she rose into the air, and, hovering an instant over a great

laurel-bush, vanished.

She was a fairy--a wood-nymph. She would

be invisible for ever to all mortals, save those few who have minds

to believe, eyes to see. To these she is ever present, the spirit of

Nature--a sprite of the meadow, a naiad of lakes, a nymph of the

woods.

HISTORICAL NOTE

_(By Another Hand)_

In the opening week of January, 1923, there appeared on the outside of

a certain door within a dingy, sunless, and cramped apartment a slip

of paper bearing the following typewritten notice:

Nobody may come into this room if the door is shut tight (if it is

shut not quite latched it is all right) without knocking. The person

in the room if he agrees that one shall come in will say "come in," or

something like that and if he does not agree to it he will say "Not

yet, please," or something like that. The door may be shut if nobody

is in the room but if a person wants to come in, knocks and hears no

answer that means that there is no one in the room and he must not go

in.

Reason. If the door is shut tight and a person is in the

room the shut door means that the person in the room wishes to be left

alone. The author of this odd manifesto (here reproduced with strict

textual exactitude from the frayed original) was the author of the

foregoing story, then just three months short of nine years old. The

door on which it appeared was that of the room in which, on a small

typewriter, she wrote down the adventures of Eepersip; and the week

in which it appeared was that in which these adventures had their

beginning.

She finished them, in the same room,

three months later, early in the March of her ninth completed year and

a few days after her birthday. One of her curious, slightly un-American

inventions, I must here explain, was the concept of her own birthday

as an annual occasion for handing out things to the other members of

her family. She planned this story from the beginning as a gift for her

mother on March 4. Would her mother "like" it, though? On that point

there would have to be a disinterested opinion--as it happened, mine.

With intense secrecy, behind the latched door of that room guarded

by the constrained preparatory notice, she read me the instalments

as they were produced.

My candid guess was that her mother

would indeed "like" it. I liked it myself, if only as unconscious

expression of a radiant physical vitality--so much I found in it of

the mighty swimmer, the enjoyable young comrade of trail and river,

always ready to swing a paddle tirelessly or carry ungrumbling a full

fair share of pack. I liked it, too, as her answer to the one year

which she had ever been called upon to spend in undeniably tawdry

surroundings. But, alas, there came interruptions one of them in the

shape of the only appreciable illness she has ever had--and these

pulled down her average daily output. On her big days the small typist

clicked off fresh copy to the extent of from four to five thousand

words; but still the appointed morning caught her some pages short of

the end. The tale came to Finis a few days later. Its length, in that

first incarnation, was some 40,000 words, or not far from what it is

now.

Up to that point there had been, of course, no thought of

print. It was I who introduced the question of print; and it had at

that time no connection whatever with publication. The author of the

story never had (and never has) experienced any school system, public

or private, her education having been exclusively the home-made one

devised by her mother; and I was beginning to think it high time that

print became a part of it. It was, in fine, my idea that we ought to

have a piece of her work put into type in some small shop where she

could set part of it herself, pull her own proofs, learn more about

proof-reading by correcting them, and see the whole thing through to

the binding of a small armful of copies for her friends.

But

before anything of that sort was done I wanted her to have the practice

of revising her first copy as carefully as possible and putting it

into strictly printable condition--as, indeed, she was eager to do.

Accordingly she took it away with her in the summer, worked on it from

early July through September in the intervals of swimming, canoeing,

mountain-climbing, and plain day-dreaming, and brought it back, on

the 5th of October, 1923, ready for print. Twenty-four hours later we

left it in a burning building from which nothing got out but the lucky

human occupants.

From the point of view of an admittedly

fond parent--for I can make no slightest pretension to the ability to

contemplate all this with a stranger's or a critic's detachment--it

was heart-rending to watch the nine-year-old author torture her memory

to the end of reconstituting the tale in its first shape. There were,

during the next weeks, a good many blank hours at the typewriter, and

it was slowly and painfully that page followed page. At this rate, it

was going to take about three years merely to salvage what had once

been manufactured out of the void in three months.

Then, one day

in December, everything was suddenly different. As an experiment of

despair, Barbara had stopped trying to remember the shape of sentences,

the precise order and phraseology of details, and had begun to let the

material come back as it listed. And to her astonishment it came in a

freshet, like northern rivers when the ice goes out. When, a few days

later, we put work aside to organize our makeshift Christmas, she was

still in a happy glow, the first third of the fantasy existed again,

and the story was running over its banks.

There followed one

interruption after another, and it was not until the autumn of 1924

that the second draft was completed. In the late winter of 1924-25,

Barbara worked patiently through the first third, putting it in what

she hoped would be final shape. The manuscript had to be laid away

in May of 1925, and was not touched again for nine months. Then, in

February and March, 1926, she did her revision of the second and third

parts, made a few minor improvements in Part I, and typed out a fair

copy of the whole--the copy from which this little book is set.

To what extent is this twelve-year-old manuscript identical with the

nine-year-old story? To a far greater extent, I am sure, than seems

compatible with the huge number of hours spent on it since it was

completed; for it happens that a disproportionate number of those

hours has gone into laborious, at times unconscious, recovery of the

precise effects which were in the lost original. The differences are

not where a stranger to the author would naturally look for them: that

is, in the diction and the build of sentences. Barbara's vocabulary

at nine was, of course, a stratified arrangement of deposits from

Walter de la Mare[2][3][4] and Mark Twain, Shelley

and Scott; that is to say, it was just what it is now except for the

later addition of words which could not be in this story anyhow--the

words of history, of science. And certainly the fundamental ideas

and emotions of the story have undergone no change. The fact is,

it was conceived and written at the end of a phase which could not

return--that phase of normal childhood in which nature means nearly

everything and civilization nearly nothing. The whole purport of

Eepersip's existence is simply a healthy nine-year-old consciousness

made articulate--something that an eleven-year-old could recover

only by a feat of the memory, and an adult mind only by an improbable

_tour de force_ of the imagination. Barbara, in short, designed

this curious narrative at the last moment when to do so would have

been at all open to her. By no human possibility could it have been in

her head at eleven if she had not had it down on paper at nine.

[1][2][3] No books meant more to her, between the ages of six and ten,

than The Three Mulla-Mulgars, _A Little Boy Lost_, and The Princess and

the Goblin

The chief differences, then, between the printed and the destroyed

versions represent the inevitable development of the author's taste

in minor particulars, and they are these: (1) There is appreciably

less of the pursuit-and-escape device, and correspondingly more of the

sheer revelling in natural beauty; (2) a great many exact measurements,

in the form of dates, distances, rates, heights, and depths, have

been omitted as realistic and therefore trivializing; (3) there is a

somewhat maturer attempt to keep the fauna and flora consistent with

latitude, altitude, and season; and (4) the lapse of time is managed

rather more consciously and coherently than it was in the first place.

If, in the treatment of these and other details of the story, there

seems to he a progressive increase in maturity, that is a consequence

and a measure of the nine months' interval between the author's

revision of Part I and her revision of Parts II and III.

It

will be observed that the differences involve little or no addition.

The one piece of addition is in the episode of Eepersip's young sister

Fleuriss, which is considerably more developed. The obvious reason for

this is that the author's own young sister, at the time of the first

draft, existed only as an insistent demand on Barbara's part; whereas

in the period of the revision she was a dream fulfilled, subject to

adoring daily observation.

As to ordinary literacy, there is

no perceptible difference, and has been none since the typewritten

by-products of Barbara's sixth and seventh years. In short, what

the reader is here given is an articulate eight and nine-year-old

child's outpouring of her own dreams and longings in a fanciful tale,

superficially revised by the hand of a twelve-year-old girl whose

life on its more artificial side is made up principally of books and

music.

It was the youthful author's idea, not mine, that

her story should be accompanied by a word of explanation from her

father. I do not know how, when, or exactly why she formulated such a

requirement, any more than I can explain where she got many another

of the ideas with which she has been known to startle or confound me.

Long after the story had been completed and while it was undergoing

revision, there arrived a day on which I was told that the requirement

existed: that Barbara had secretly been counting on me, and with

pleasure in the thought. Pleasure! If I could give that and so easily,

and to her, it not mine to make a gesture of resistance. I insist only

that what I have to say shall be placed where it can stand between

no reader and the story.

It would be neither good manners nor

good sense for me to attempt any sort of appraisal of this chronicle

of Eepersip's adventures in the spacious rooms of her House without

Windows. I have been too near to the whole thing, and am too near

the chronicler. The most that I can now add without impropriety is

a statement of why the first thought, a book to be manufactured but

by no means published, gave way after all to a different idea.

It began to strike me that here was something representatively

valuable--valuable, I mean, as a representation of something lovely in

generalized childhood itself--and yet not so very likely to achieve

frequent expression. The fact is that the impulses crystallized in this

story mostly fade into the light of common day a year or two before

the dawn of that amount of mechanical articulacy which is necessary

for a tangible expression of them; and they are therefore almost never

expressed. Actually, I do not happen to be acquainted with a single

prose document of much scope which achieves the full expression, or any

first-hand expression, of what in a normal, healthy child's mind and

heart during that mysterious phase when butterflies, flowers, winging

swallow, and white-tapped waves are twice as real as even a quite

bearable parent, and incomparably more important--the phase before

there is any unshakable Tyranny of Things.

What is probably

unusual about Barbara is the conspiracy of the circumstances which

have made these two things, the phase and the necessary articulacy,

overlap. She is precocious, and the phase may have lasted a year or

two longer than it does in many. She is not excessively gregarious and

has not been regimented in schools and groups; therefore nothing has

as yet standardized her, or ironed out her spontaneity, or made her

particularly ashamed of it. She has been given plenty of time to know

herself. And, almost above all, having used a typewriter as a plaything

from a time that she can't remember, she was able to rattle off an

easy 1200 words an hour, with any awareness of the physical process,

years before penmanship could have developed half the proficiency, even

with intense concentration on the physical process alone.

I

formed, then, the opinion that her Eepersip, who lives an ardent life

of three or four years in nearly every child's consciousness, lives

not at all anywhere no the world's multitude of books. And it came to

seem to me that this Eepersip very possibly has something to say to you

about your children, and about yourself of a time that you may easily

have forgotten, as well as, perhaps, to your children directly.

A last point: Barbara has been given by her parents, in the final

preparation of this manuscript, exactly what help she has asked for.

That is not nearly so much help as many an adult author often has from

us, for there is not one idea or structural change of ours in the

entire story. But I see no value in withholding solicited advice in

order to make a Roman holiday for those who like to chuckle or guffaw

over infantile slips in spelling and grammar. Barbara, whose spelling

and grammarhappen to be very reliable, would want us to straighten

them out for her if they weren't; and we should do it. When she asks

whether a comma will do or ought it to be a semi-colon? we answer as

well as we can. When she wants to know: "have I made it clear what

this means?" or "Have I used this word twice too near together?" of

course we say how it strikes us. Annoyingly from my Yankee point of

view, she insists on a preference for Oxford spelling, undoubtedly

met in three out of four of the contemporary books which she reads.

Well, then, I point out to her that if going to spell "colour" she,

must also spell "favourite" and "storey" and "veranda." But the words

themselves, the sentences, are hers, just as truly as is the pattern

of the whole; and hers is a really workmanlike care for weeding out

gawky constructions and repetitions of the words of which she ins been

successively over-fond.

One of the great objects of imaginative

writing, I take it, is to have joy. Another, not wholly separable from

the first, is to learn as you go. I like to suppose that Barbara,

just turned twelve, is having her just share of both.